New Delhi: The Man who ended the Cold War between Russia and the US without bloodshed and failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet Union – Mikhail Gorbachev died on Tuesday.
On becoming general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985, aged just 54, he had set out to revitalize the system by introducing limited political and economic freedoms, but his reforms spun out of control.
Gorbachev, the last Soviet president, forged arms reduction deals with the United States and partnerships with Western powers to remove the Iron Curtain that had divided Europe since World War Two and bring about the reunification of Germany.
His policy of ‘glasnost’ — free speech — allowed previously unthinkable criticism of the party and the state, but also emboldened nationalists who began to press for independence in the Baltic republics of Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and elsewhere.
Many Russians never forgave Gorbachev for the turbulence that his reforms unleashed, considering the subsequent plunge in their living standards too high a price to pay for democracy.
Gorbachev came into power in 1985 and was recognized for opening up the USSR and for his rapprochement with the West, but he was unable to prevent his country from collapsing in 1991.
The hospital where Gorbachev died said he had been suffering from a long and serious illness.
(Vinayak)